


I Am No Bird, And No Net Ensnares Me

by lilbirdie



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Damian Wayne Has Friends!!!, Damian Wayne Needs a Hug, Damian Wayne is Robin, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, More tags will be added as I write more, Other, Slow Burn, literature references out the wazoo!!, please note: this takes place in a different universe! it’s an au!!, social commentary because c’mon of course, some rich kids being assholes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-17 14:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20622359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilbirdie/pseuds/lilbirdie
Summary: Tilly Ventura has always been a soft thing in a hard world. A mere scrap of a girl, with bloodied fists and unattainable dreams, desperately trying to survive on her mother’s whims.When she befriends Robin on a rooftop, a whole new world opens up to her, full of friends and family and a future. But the world of Gotham’s elite is a double-sided coin, and Tilly isn’t sure where she belongs; in the dark, or in the light.





	I Am No Bird, And No Net Ensnares Me

**The darkest thing**  
**Met me in the dark**  
\- Mary Oliver 

~~~ 

Tilly was very small and not very intimidating, and Harry was very tall and very frightening, but Tilly had a switchblade and he didn’t, so she figured they were pretty much even.

“Give it back.”

Harry Hernandez was a wiry, hunched over creature, with missing front teeth and holes in his shoes. He was in his first year of high school and thought he ruled the world, and all the money in it. He looked down his nose at her, and flicked Nell Little’s pocket money between his fingers.

“Why don’t you mind your own business, eh?” he sneered, and spat at her feet. Nell cowered behind her.

Tilly tapped her switchblade, waiting faithfully in her pocket, and shrugged off her backpack.

”Give. It. Back,” she said again, firmer. 

“I said, fuck off!” Harry shouted, and took a step forwards, like he meant to charge her.

“It’s okay, Tilly, I don’t need it,” Nell whispered, and tugged at her arm. Tilly looked back at her, little Nell Little, still with baby fat on her cheeks. Saw the bruise on her eye, the bright red of her spilt lip, the stark whites of her eyes against the gloom of the alleyway. 

“Listen to your friend, Ventura,” Harry said, “run along before someone gets _really_ hurt.”

“Do you get all your one liners from Cartoon Network?” Tilly snorted, adding a chuckle at the end for good measure. If there was one thing Harry hated, it was being mocked.

Typically, he paused.

“I beg your _fucking_ pardon?” he hissed.

Tilly rammed her fist upwards into his chin. He yelled and stumbled backwards, arms flailing. She went to kick him, but she was too slow - he went to the side and punched her right in the jaw. Pain exploded in her mouth. Nell screamed. 

She didn’t register hitting the ground until she was pulled back onto her feet. Harry gripped the front of her shirt, yelled something at her. Her ears were ringing. Then he was stuffing his hands down her pockets, his smirk a nasty, slimy crack in his face.

She grabbed her switchblade before he could. It was perfectly moulded to the shape of her hand, a calming, familiar weight. She jabbed his stomach, just hard enough to let him know it was there. 

“What-“

She kneed him in the balls.

He dropped her, doubling over, coins clinking on the pavement. Nell darted forwards and gathered them with shaky hands.

Tilly spat blood in Harry’s hair. He had tears in his eyes.

“Fuck off,” he wheezed. 

“C’mon, Nell,” Tilly chirped, folding her blade away. She grabbed her backpack and slung it over her shoulder, guided Nell out of the alley and back onto the street, and tried not to fall over.

“Oh my god, Tilly, you’re bleeding!” Nell fretted. Tilly’s head swam. She nearly walked into a pole.

“Hey, look,” she said. She reached into her mouth, wincing at the grimy taste of her fingers, and pulled out a bloody tooth. Nell whimpered.

“Oh my god.”

“It’s okay, it was loose anyway.”

“Harry is going to kill you! You’re gonna die!”

“It’s fine, Nell. You don’t need to worry about it.”

They stopped at an intersection. Here, Otisberg began to turn into The Narrows, the streets thinning, the buildings dilapidating. The gothic architecture Gotham was so famous for started to become foreboding instead of charming. The after-school traffic noise pounded in her head, a car horn somewhere in the distance splitting her skull.

Nell pulled her backpack off and hugged it, something she did when she was nervous. 

“Are you gonna vomit?”

“No, no. I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?”

Nell looked up at her with her endlessly black eyes. Nell was 7 to Tilly’s 12, and just as little as her surname suggested. She had that air of innocence that all small children had, the sort of face that unpleasant expressions didn’t belong on. 

“Yeah,” Tilly murmured, and straightened the strap of Nell’s overalls. “I’m fine. How’s your face?”

Nell shrugged. “It’s fine.”

The light went green. They gripped each other’s hands as they crossed. 

“Um...” Nell mumbled. She didn’t let go of her hand. “Thanks, Tilly.”

Tilly beamed, and ruffled her fluffy hair.

“You’re welcome, squirt.”

Nell’s giggles were the ultimate cure-all. 

Tilly and Nell’s apartment block was on a consistently busy street, pressed right up against the road. It was a squat, ugly building, quite possibly a million years old, made of sturdy red bricks that had faded many years ago, with arched windows and two spires that had once held gargoyles back when gargoyles had been important.

No one ever parked out front. The steps up to the entrance intruded on the sidewalk. There wasn’t enough room. 

Tilly stopped abruptly.

The number plates had changed, but she recognised it. A battered, bulky thing, dirty red with one white door and a missing taillight, parked exactly where it shouldn’t be.

“Tilly?” Nell said. “You okay? Harry gave you brain damage, didn’t he? Oh, god.”

The girl’s fretting pulled her back.

“What? I don’t have brain damage, Nell. I get punched all the time. I have developed a _thick skull_.” Tilly said it with flair, dragging her up the stairs and through the doors. 

“A thick skull won’t protect you from _concussions_!” Nell hissed. 

The lobby smelt of mildew, and had suspicious stains on the already vomit coloured carpet. The elevator was out of order and would probably remain out of order for the next century. The stairs were dark, and also smelt of mildew. 

“You should come to my place,” said Nell. “My Dad can fix your face. He has, like... ointment and stuff.”

Tilly gingerly touched the growing bruise on her cheekbone. The offer was tempting. Nell’s parents were kind and happy and had plenty of food and they were _safe, Nell was safe, she would be safe there_ -

“No thanks. I’ve got to get home to my mum.”

Tilly dropped Nell off on the second floor like she did every day, but she didn’t stay long enough to be invited inside, like she was every day. The stairs suddenly became steeper, darker, longer. A road to nowhere.

Her apartment was on the fifth floor, at the very end of the hallway. Mrs Flores, an elderly woman who lived next door, was standing statue still in her doorway.

“Tilly,” she crooned. Everything Mrs Flores said was a croon. “Hello, Tilly.”

“Hi, Mrs Flores.”

Mrs Flores shuffled awkwardly, her cane tapping on the floor.

“Would you like to come in? For, uh...” she mumbled, gesturing into her apartment, “for tea?”

Her eyes, almost wrinkled over but still very much alive, flickered ever so slightly to Tilly’s door. 

An escape. 

She opened her mouth to take it, but what came out was “no thank you, Mrs Flores. I’ve got to... to see my mum.”

Mrs Flores’s head tilted ever so slightly in a nod.

“Well, you’re always welcome, you know that, _cariña_.”

“I know. Thank you,” Tilly said, and smiled, then closed her mouth when she remembered it was full of blood.

Music was drifting out from under her door. It wasn’t her mum’s music. She pushed it open.

Kenneth was back.

He was standing over the stove, tapping his feet to the obnoxious rap song playing from his phone. The tattoos curling up his neck melded into the wall behind him, and he looked skeletal, full of holes; he pulled his face away from the steam from his pot and smiled, his mouth a chasm.

“Hey, kiddo!” he said, and his voice was tinged with alcohol. She could smell it on his breath from here.

Tilly slowly closed the door behind her, gripping the straps of her bag. Her bones were suddenly ice, steel, too cold and too heavy. Dread leaked into the pit of her stomach.

“Miss me? Have a good day at school?” 

Kenneth quirked a brow. Tilly felt it like a gunshot.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, great day at school,” she murmured.

“Hi, honey!” Isabel called from the living room. 

Kenneth’s arm movements were fluid, loose, untethered and threatening. He kept smiling. 

Tilly’s switchblade burnt a hole in her pocket. She slipped past him, keeping her eyes on the floor.

Her mother was slumped on the couch, the light from the TV casting deep shadows into the deeper hollows of her cheeks and paling her skin. Her eyes were unfocused, her black hair limp and dead around her face. She looked like a ghost. 

“Hi, baby,” she slurred cheerfully, her accent thick and oozing in her mouth. “How was school, huh?”

There was a smattering of white powder on the coffee table, along with an expired credit card and two sickly green beer bottles. Tilly’s heart receded further into her stomach.

“Mum, you promised.” It came out as a whisper. 

“It was - it was only -“ Isabel stammered, attempting to sit up.

Tilly felt, more than heard, Kenneth come up behind her.

“C’mon, Tilly. Don’t a spoil sport,” he said, mock frowning at her.

_You’re not safe. You’re not safe_.

She turned on her heels, slowly, and aimed herself towards her room, slowly. Slowly, so as to not wake the beast. 

“Don’t be like that!” Isabel called after her. “I’m sorry, I just -“

Tilly closed her bedroom door behind her. Slowly. 

They hadn’t even noticed she was bleeding.

~~~ 

Tilly sat huddled in her oversized hoodie, scraped knees drawn up to her chin, a dog-eared book sitting by her feet. She didn’t even need to look at it to know exactly what it said. She’d read it so many times the words were practically engrained into her memory.

The world was quietest up on the roof. The summer air was muggy but the breeze was cool and bit at her through her clothes, promising autumn. Sometimes, if she stayed out long enough, the clouds would finally drift apart and she’d catch the stars, diamonds hidden in the smog; or, if she stayed out even longer, a flash of the Batsignal, bright and hopeful. 

She wasn’t supposed to be up here. The apartment block did not include stairs to the roof, so she assumed that meant you weren’t supposed to access it. It was a secret, hidden world, a sanctuary, just for her. Up here, she was safe.

The weight in the pit of her stomach kept pulling her back down.

Her hand kept going to her shoulder, her fingernails digging through her hoodie to the small, circular scars underneath. 

_It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife_, said Jane Austen, over and over and over again. She was stuck on the first page. 

She tore her hands away from herself and slammed her book closed, and then felt guilty about it. She picked it up, dusted it off, gently set it down again. 

Tilly stood, stretched her legs, jumped up and down a bit. Her bruised cheek ached with the movement. Her head felt stuffy, full of cotton. Maybe Harry had given her a concussion. 

She found herself at the edge, chasing the soothing nearly-autumn breeze. There was something about not being able to climb any higher that made her want to free fall back down again. 

People were busy going about their lives down below. Cars streamed by in rivers of red and yellow headlights, going from coloured to black and white to coloured under the street lights. Tilly leaned out, as far as she could without toppling. It wasn’t far enough.

She silenced the sensible part of her brain and climbed onto the spire, felt the solid mass of it under her palms, her feet steady and trustworthy on the eave. She faced the world, leaned out further, further, as far as she dared, until she could see nothing but the sky and the ground and the space between, and something in her heart clicked. _Yes. Now you can fly_.

“Miss?”

Tilly started. She turned - and there was a boy.

Her brain took a second to realise that there was another person on her roof, another second to realise it was Robin, and then another second to realise _it was Robin_.

“Don’t jump.”

“What?” she said, stupidly. 

Robin took a step towards her, hands up, like he was approaching a wild animal. She felt like a wild animal. His figure burnt a hole in the air, like he’d been cut out of a magazine and stuck there.

“You shouldn’t jump,” he said, carefully. Then she remembered she was hanging off a roof.

“Oh! Oh, right,” she clambered back over, Robin wincing as she went, “no, I wasn’t going to jump.”

He pointed to the edge. “You were, uh...”

“Yeah, yeah, um. I was just... looking.”

He scowled at her. He was no taller than her, with a very round, turned up nose that wrinkled as he frowned. He was right there, right in front of her, tangible and indescribably real.

“You were just _looking_?” he growled. A young voice, a little warbled, but young. He was young, like her. She didn’t know why she was surprised. She knew he was young. She’d seen him on the news before. Everyone had seen Robin on the news before. He had been young forever.

“Yeah. It’s... it’s interesting... down there...” she mumbled, gesturing vaguely. He kept scowling.

“Oh. Well. Okay then.” 

Robin crossed his arms and shuffled his feet. His boots were green with red laces, which struck Tilly as going a little overboard. His belt and the inside of his cape were a buttery yellow. He looked like a very dangerous traffic light.

His belt squeaked. Robin cleared his throat.

“Is there something in your pocket?” Tilly asked.

“No,” he said quickly, and rummaged around in one of the many pouches on his belt. It squeaked again - _meowed_ \- and a tiny white kitten, washed blue by the moonlight, poked its head out.

“You keep kittens in there?”

“I found it in an alleyway,” Robin said, and his voice softened ever so slightly, just enough that you had to be paying attention to notice. “I think it’s hungry.”

The kitten squeaked again and squirmed around in his traffic-light-green gloves. It was a tiny, pitiful thing, a scrap of matted fur.

“I probably have something!” Tilly exclaimed, remembering the few cans of assorted gross foods in their cupboard. She started towards the way down.

“What are you doing?” Robin said sharply. Tilly paused.

“Going to get food.”

“Off the edge?”

“Yeah. That’s the way down.” He was probably worried she was going to kill herself. “Don’t worry, I do this all the time.”

He didn’t look impressed.

She crouched, grabbed the gutter, and swung herself down. The familiar rush of air and blood roared in her ears. Her feet hit the window frame; all the windows on the building were framed with chunky white decorative bricks, just thick enough and rough enough to grip. 

She let go of the gutter and grabbed the drain pipe, and pushed off the window, landing on the railing of the fire escape below. The pipe groaned nervously. She’d have to tighten the screws again later.

She jumped down the steps without waiting to see if she’d woken whoever lived there, bracing herself on the railings with both hands to stifle the noise of her impacts. 

Her apartment’s access to the fire escape was the kitchen window, which was stupid, because the kitchen bench was under it and pantries were on top of it, leaving no room for anyone to actually climb out. Her bedroom window was one window across. 

The ledge that connected all the windowsills (again, chunky, white, and decorative) was wide enough for pot plants, and wide enough for her. She shimmied across, fingers dug into the gaps between the bricks. She wiggled her window open - she closed it behind her each time, just in case - and slipped back into her room. 

At first, the apartment was silent. Then, soft murmurs, from her mother’s room. Tilly felt sick all over again.

_Deep breath_. This was a practiced. The old apartment was hard to be silent in, but she had learnt and memorised each creaky floorboard and squeaky hinge. She knelt and peeked under the bottom of her door. All the lights were off. She cautiously turned her doorknob, and then quickly wretched the door open. The only sound was the rush of air. 

The kitchen still smelt of whatever Kenneth had been cooking - some kind of soup. The sink was full of dirty bowels. 

The cupboards doors had to be opened slowly so they didn’t creak. A can of tuna sat like buried treasure up the back. 

Slowly close the cupboard. Tiptoe back to your room. Swing the door closed and stop it just before it hits the wall, then slowly turn the knob and shut it. Back out the window. Climb back up, but this time with a tuna can between your teeth. 

Robin was still there waiting, still just as breathtakingly alive as he had been when she’d left. He reached for her hand and pulled her up.

“Tuna!” Tilly cried, and held the can aloft. 

The kitten came up to her and mewled, rubbing itself on her ankles, wobbling on its stubby baby legs. 

“Tuna,” Robin repeated. “Tuna. Very good. Cats like tuna.”

Everybody knew that. She suspected he just wasn’t good at conversation. 

Tilly scooped the tuna into her palm so the kitten wouldn’t have to risk hurting itself on the sharp edge of the can. It was indeed hungry; it ate so fast she was worried it might inhale it.

“Does it have a name?” she asked.

“Of course not. It’s a stray.”

Tilly hummed, rubbed her finger along the kitten’s bony spine.

“Is it a girl or a boy?”

Robin dropped himself from a crouched position to a sitting position. His armour - was it armour?- shifted on his body in a solid sort of way, the R on his chest glinting. She fought the urge to reach out and touch it.

Robin said, “It’s a girl. I checked.”

The kitten started nibbling the tips of her fingers.

“How about Elizabeth?” Tilly said.

Robin made a funny scoffing sound with his tongue, a ‘tt’.

“Like your book?” he snarked, almost unkindly, and pointed to her Pride and Prejudice, still sitting where she’d left it.

“Yes. I happen to quite like that book,” she huffed. “It’s an elegant, classy name, and you’re an elegant, classy lady, aren’t you, Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth almost tipped over trying to wrestle Tilly’s hand. Robin made the ‘tt’ sound again.

“Can you take care of her?”

“Oh, uh...” 

Pets were not allowed in the apartments. Apart from this tuna, she had nothing to feed it. She had nowhere for it to go to the toilet.

“Yes!” she said, because Robin had asked her. “Yeah, I can take care of her.”

“Excellent.”

Robin stood and put his hands on his hips in one swift movement. “I’ll help you get back down.”

“Oh, I won’t need help -“

“You can’t possible climb down there holding a kitten.”

He scooped Elizabeth into his arms. She yowled in protest. 

“Now, get up.”

His voice was young, yes, but it was carved from steel and the night, made for giving orders and having them followed. Tilly got up. 

He swished his cape aside and pulled something black from his belt; a gun, with strange claws on the tip. Instinctively, she stood a step back.

“What’s that thing?”

He didn’t answer, just shoved Elizabeth back in his belt-pouch and threw her book at her. He stalked forwards as she fumbled to catch it, put his arm around her waist, and before she knew what was happening, he pitched them off the roof.

Tilly screamed. Robin fired the gun, and the claws shot forwards and clamped onto the wall, followed by a line of black rope. His cape billowed. Then, a jolt, and they went swinging forwards, Robin putting his feet forwards, and they hit the wall with a thud, right by her window.

It took her a second to remember how to breathe.

“Oh my god!” she cried, her voice high and thin, “holy shit!”

“That’s your window, isn’t it?” Robin asked, perfectly calm.

“Um, yeah. Yep. That’s - that’s my window.”

Her heart pumped furiously and joyously against her ribs.

She tucked Pride and Prejudice under her arm and pushed open the window for the third time that night, climbing in awkwardly with shaky legs. Robin passed through Elizabeth, who was shaking too, but from the cold.

“Hey, thanks for checking on me, by the way,” Tilly whispered, turning to him, “I wasn’t really going to jump, honest, but it was nice of you to -“

He was gone. There was nothing there but the wind, with nothing to prove he had ever been there except the tiny bundle of fur in her arms and the soaring heart in her chest.

The world suddenly felt a little wider, a little colder. She stuck her head out the window to see nothing but the blackened alleyway. 

“Bye,” she said to the darkness, and closed the window.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! First of all thank you so much for reading!  
I have had this fic in my head for like two or three years, lmao. OC fics, especially Canon/OC fics are supposed to be ‘embarrassing’ and stuff, and I’ve only just worked up the courage to write it, cause fuck that, y’know?  
I hope you like my scruffy little sunshine daughter Tilly and her story! Thanks again for reading!!


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